I’m making this thread to hold whatever odd testing requests I dream up from viewers to improve Kongming’s Archives, and giving it a name some of you might actually keep in mind and check when new posts are made. I’ll be including odd bits in it from this point on, starting with the one below.

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Internet Explorer Windows users. After clearing your cache, please visit the site listed below and tell me if the line spacing is accurate. Ideally, the hanzi and super text (the numbers and roman numerals that hang above text) shouldn’t displace the line heights. I want to know if this is happening to everyone, which means yet another shortcoming in Microsoft’s implementation of CSS.

Well, an update. I was unable to get this to work the way I wanted in Internet Explorer for Windows despite a great effort, the program simply doesn’t offer the CSS support I need in order to get this done (which disappoints me greatly; Internet Explorer fails in some advanced CSS, but this is basic stuff… every other browser supports it). I hate Internet Explorer for Windows. Internet Explorer for Macintosh even supported this stuff in version 5. Anyway…

I’ve gone back to notes in the parenthesis, e.g. (1), and the actual note itself is displayed inline. All is color coded for your viewing pleasure… or reference… or whatever you want to call it. To elaborate on this deviation from the previous system, I’m trying to attempt a few new things to make large biographies (like Lu Xun) more accessible on the Internet. I’m interested in all kinds of feedback.

I have to say that I like in-line quotation, and the colour-coding only makes it better. I never liked the idea of having to skip to the bottom of a page, especially a long webpage (even if it was via links), to see what Pei has to say.

"We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back."— Roland Deschain, Wolves of the Calla

Whew… okay… here I am up four hours past my rational bedtime because I refused to go to sleep until I had solved yet another Internet Explorer bug to meet my satisfaction. Right about now I’m about ready to dedicate the rest of my life to finding each and every retarded developer behind their CSS implementation, or perhaps the managers that neutered it, so I can beat them upside their heads with something blunt and hopefully painful.

Anyway, what I want to do is sort of working now.

Here is the page I’m working on, though the problem existed previously on any game home page that had the little Amazon link graphics. Basically, the line height was being disrupted by the presence of the images thanks to some CSS, but I wanted to use that CSS for other browsers that don’t actually suck. I would appreciate it if a few people that have Internet Explorer of various version can take a look at this development page:

Please let me know if there are differences between the demo image of IE just above, and what you see. I’m particularly interested in problems with line spacing. And I’ll also take this chance to remind everyone that KMA looks a whole bunch prettier when you are using any browser but Internet Explorer.

I use IE 5.2.2 for Mac, and the line spacing looks fine to me. It is slightly better than your image of IE, but not as perfect as the image of "how it would look if IE didn't suck". It's not really that noticeable...

In your image using IE, the line spacing looks sporadic. However, comparing Safari to IE, I've noticed that the line spacing is wider, but uniform (each space is about the same width), and not sporadic as in the image. Safari looks crisp, and the line spacing is always the same width (for lack of better word).

The only people you have to get back are those who have done you good...

I keep forgetting that there are other Mac users out there. IE 5 for Macintosh rendered the page almost perfectly the first time I made it, and continues to get the margins and spacing exactly the way I want it. It doesn’t underline the transparent portions of the GIF images when you mouseover them in links like it should, but then again neither does IE for Windows (which won’t even let me margin down the images in the first place without messing up), and that is certainly a minor thing.

IE for Macintosh, in terms of rendering, is actually about twice as good as the latest IE 6 for Windows and the way Microsoft is talking it will continue to be better than the IE that is released with Longhorn. It supports things like negative margins on images independent of line spacing (the problem here), alpha transparency in images, and many aspects of CSS2 that IE for Windows just plain old can’t handle. The reason is that IE 5 for Macintosh was actually developed in Microsoft by a separate Mac team that actually cared about their product. I personally think it is sad that it is so much more capable than its Windows counterpart in terms of rendering (Microsoft says they can’t add many of these features because they could conflict across systems, but having decided to limit downloads to your OS this makes no sense to me). Of course, IE for Macintosh happens to be a pretty slow browser, so in the end it isn’t that much better.

Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, and Safari all render the page perfectly. There might be slight differences in line height because of how they handle text and anti-aliasing, but I agree that it is not anything to be the slightest bit worried about. I haven’t tested in Opera yet though, and I probably should. I still think Firefox and Safari are the best browsers out there.